Thursday News Threads 9/10

London hip-hop artist Speech Debelle was just announced the winner of the Mercury Music Prize, beating out strong contenders Bat For Lashes, Kasabian, La Roux, Friendly Fires, Florence and the Machine, and Lisa Hannigan. Her album Speech Therapy (Big Dada) won for best album of the past year by a U.K. or Irish artist. Be sure to subscribe to our Song of the Day podcast, as we’ll be featuring Speech Debelle next week!

Beckpulled together MGMT, Devendra Banhart and Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale to join him for the next installment of his Record Club. They recorded Leonard Cohen’s entire legendary album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Here’s the video of “Suzanne” by this supergroup of sorts:

Matt and Kim just released via Pitchfork a remix to their song “Daylight,” featuring verses by one of the most important rap groups ever: De La Soul. It will be featured in the new NBA Live video game.

T-Pain and his people just put out an app for the iPhone called “I Am T-Pain.” It’s essentially a way for any Joe Shmo to spend $2.99 and sing auto-tuned awfulness to perfection. If you weren’t already tired of this mainstream rap phenomenon, get ready to hear it everywhere you never wanted.

James Allan, frontman of the band (and other Mercury Prize nominee) Glasvegas, reportedly went missing nearly a week ago, in the days before embarking on a nationwide tour of the U.S. with Kings of Leon. When asked whether the singer would be joining the band at the shows, Glasvegas’ manager replied: “I fucking hope so.” (UPDATE: He’s turned up in NYC.)

A newly discovered spider species is being named afterDavid Bowie. The large, hairy, yellow species was discovered in Malaysia and given the name Heteropoda Davidbowie, which seems somewhat appropriate considering Bowie’s important album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Sony Walkman outsold the iPod in Japan last week! This is the first time in more than four years that the iPod has not been the number one selling digital music device there. Will the US follow suit?